James Oney was born in December 1924 in Harrison County, Texas near Harleton [Annotator's Note: Harleton, Texas]. He grew up on a farm. Daily chores were required. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Oney how the Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1945, affected his family.] It did not affect them much. They raised all of their food and cotton. That was the only cash crop they had. His father said that life was good, and it was. They never missed a meal, but he knows people who did. It was a terrible time in the country. Farm life did not affect going to school. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if the aggression of Germany and Japan were discussed in school.] It was not even talked about. He was in high school then. He remembers when he heard that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. His older brother had a new car. Oney was dating a young lady and his brother had his girlfriend and they heard it on the radio. Franklin Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] declared war later. Oney was 16, and he was concerned. Some people he knew were going in the military and he knew he would be too. His brother went in after Oney did. His brother was married and joined the Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions]. They did not discuss it much, even after they were discharged. There was a lot of conversation about the war after it was declared.

James Oney was in Portland, Oregon after leaving his family farm in the middle of the summer [Annotator's Note: Summer of 1942]. He went to work in the Kaiser Shipyards [Annotator's Note: Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation in Portland, Oregon, 1941 to 1945] until November [Annotator's Note: November 1942] when he decided to join the Navy. He thought about the Marines, but the Navy appealed to him. He had his minor's release and was immediately accepted. The next day, he took his physical exam and stayed in a hotel that night. He left the next day for boot camp. Boot camp was cold in Idaho [Annotator's Note: Farragut Naval Training Station in Bayview, Idaho]. They marched at least once a day. Sometimes, the weather was so severe they had to stay in their barracks. He went to Cooks and Bakers School at Farragut for 12 weeks. He graduated as a Third Class Petty Officer [Annotator's Note: Petty Officer 3rd Class]. Cooking was never a problem for him. He had helped his mother on the farm. He was not paying too much attention to what was happening in Europe or the Pacific. They did get a newsletter in the camp but he did not give it much thought. He went to Port Hueneme, California [Annotator's Note: Naval Base Ventura County, Port Hueneme, California] to where ACORN 12 [Annotator's Note: Aviation, Construction, Ordnance, Repair] was organized and prepared to go overseas. He was there five or six weeks before shipping out. He was not scared, nor had any reason to be at that time. He did give some thought as to what might happen. He did not observe anybody being nervous. They played card games and exercised daily. They were told to have their sea bags packed and that they would be leaving during the nighttime. He went aboard the Robin Wentley [Annotator's Note: the SS Robin Wentley]. It carried all of the equipment and food they would need. It was not a troopship. It was more of a transport. There were very few bunks. They were told to sleep on the deck with their life jackets on and fully dressed. There were submarines in the Pacific [Annotator's Note: Pacific Ocean] at the time and they had a destroyer escort. The first part of it they had no close calls. They were not told where they were going. Their first stop was New Caledonia [Annotator's Note: Noumea, New Caledonia, Oceania] for a rest. They had a playing field like a big city park. They stayed three days and played softball and walked along a short beach. They would have their noon meal there off the ship. He thought that was nice. They would sleep on the ship at night with the gangplank raised. One guy jumped ship after they left and before they got out of the harbor. They notified Shore Patrol [Annotator's Note: US Navy military police] who went out and got him. That ended that guy's career with them.

James Oney left New Caledonia at midnight with a destroyer escort. They arrived three days later in the Russell Islands [Annotator's Note: Banika, Russell Islands, Solomon Islands in March 1943]. They stayed a few weeks. He left the Robin Wentley [Annotator's Note: SS Robin Wentley] there and went ashore. The Wentley had a Merchant Marine crew who unloaded the supplies for ACORN 12 [Annotator's Note: Aviation, Construction, Ordnance, Repair]. An LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] came in with a battalion [Annotator's Note: 87th Construction Battalion] of Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions] but no equipment. The LST is about 350 feet long and 100 feet wide. They have front doors that drop down. Underneath the deck is open and where they carry equipment. They drive the equipment off onto the beach. The LST was sent for the purpose of taking Oney's unit's supplies when they left. The Seabees loaded on another LST. An LCI [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Infantry] came in and loaded up New Zealand troops. On the island, they lived four men to a tent. The Seabees had a forklift and a haul trailer. They moved the materials from the Wentley and stacked it. They had a prefabricated mess hall that the Seabees erected. They had large reefers [Annotator's Note: slang for refrigerated truck trailer] as a cooler and a freezer that got power from the LST. They were there three weeks. They left there for Bougainville [Annotator's Note: Bougainville, Papua New, Guinea].

James Oney and his outfit [Annotator's Note: ACORN 12; Aviation, Construction, Ordnance, Repair 12] loaded all of their equipment onto an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. A Seabee [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalions] battalion [Annotator's Note: 87th Construction Battalion] was going on another with everything needed to build an airstrip. New Zealand troops boarded an LCI [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Infantry]. The Seabees and New Zealand troops [Annotator's Note: 8th Brigade Group, 3rd New Zealand Division] left before Oney and the others during daylight. Oney left at dark. They slept on the top deck as there were no bunks in the LSTs. He was told he would be manning a deck gun. He had no training. His good friend, Frank Perry, and him volunteered to man the deck gun. It was only effective for an air raid, but not for submarines. He did that duty for three days and two nights. They would sleep two or three hours in shifts. The Seabee battalion and New Zealand troops reached Treasury Island [Annotator's Note: Treasury Islands are Mono Island and Stirling Island, Solomon Islands] and Mono Island first [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Treasury Islands, 27 October to 12 November 1943]. The Japanese were on Mono with two concrete bunkers with machine guns on the beach. They had a radio tower that got torn down later. Oney was close by but not there when the others landed. When they hit the beach, they unloaded the bulldozers first. The bulldozers had metal plates to protect the operators [Annotator's Note: then US Navy Fireman 1st Class Aurelio Tassone operated one of the dozers]. They used them to destroy the bunkers and kill the Japanese. The New Zealanders and infantry followed the dozers out. The New Zealand troops killed all but two of the Japanese. Late that afternoon, Oney's ship came into the inlet when the fighting was over. The Seabees constructed a road to where they were going to build the airfield. Oney and ACORN 12 got off on the Treasury side [Annotator's Note: on Stirling Island, Treasury Islands]. In five days, the first B-17 [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber] landed. The Seabees laid out Oney's site before they got there. They had a foxhole but Oney calls it a bomb shelter. The first thing they did was dig that when they got off the ship. They cut logs that they placed over the shelters. The first night, they had a false alarm. The second night, they [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] started dropping bombs on them. Their hospital corpsman was killed. Five Seabees were having a poker game and ignored the lights out order because the night before was a false alarm. A bomb dropped right in their tent, killing all of them. They had a raid every night for five nights. The air raids stopped once the bombers were in.

James Oney was scared when bombs were falling [Annotator's Note: during air raids on Stirling Island, Treasury Islands, Solomon Islands]. A lot of them did not go off. One could have hit on top of the timbers [Annotator's Note: covering their foxholes]. They might not have been killed by shrapnel, but the concussion could have killed them. A lot of the bombs were duds, but they had an ordnance crew who would go around in daylight and remove the firing pins. That was a job that Oney would not want. The road the Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of US naval construction battalion; this was the 87th Construction Battalion] built came along the waterfront to the airfield. When the airfield was almost finished, Frank Perry [Annotator's Note: Oney's friend] and Oney were walking down the road in between the tracks [Annotator's Note: of the bulldozers]. Perry said to look out and shoved Oney. A Japanese Zero [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero] came down and the bullets cut the dirt between them. That was the closest he came to getting killed. It just missed him by inches. He fell onto a log and was bleeding pretty good. Perry told him he could get a Purple heart [Annotator's Note: the Purple Heart Medal is award bestowed upon a United States service member who has been wounded as a result of combat actions against an armed enemy]. [Annotator's Note: Oney laughs.] ACORN 12 [Annotator's Note: Aviation, Construction, Ordnance, Repair 12] stayed there and fed the Seabees and handled radio communications. They supported the Navy pilots and ordnance people. Everything quieted down and they started preparing for the invasion of Bougainville [Annotator's Note: Bougainville Campaign, Papua New Guinea, November 1943 to November 1944]. Divisions were coming in and stopping off, but they took care of themselves. Oney did feed a battalion of Marines once. Then the invasion started on the mainland. Admiral Bull Halsey [Annotator's Note: US Navy Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey] was in command of the operation and had the flagship. They bombarded the main island day and night. The battle lasted around 20 days.

On Treasury Island [Annotator's Note: Stirling Island, Treasury Islands, Solomon Islands], James Oney was in charge of day shift in the galley. He was in charge of getting everybody fed. He did some of the cooking, but mostly he had to keep up with supplies. They had frozen turkey that came from Australia and the United States. This was in the 1940s and some of the turkey was stamped that it had been processed in 1932. [Annotator's Note: Oney laughs.] They had beef, meatballs, and spaghetti. For breakfast they had pancakes. The eggs and milk were powdered. He added sugar and vanilla flavoring to the powdered milk. The potatoes were dehydrated. Oney did what he could to make them tasty. He was popular. The ship he came back on took 30 to 35 days to get back. They were followed by a Japanese submarine a long way. There were Marines and Army units on the ship coming back. He was glad and happy to be home. He had not seen his parents for almost three years. He went to Corpus Christi Naval Air Station [Annotator's Note: Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Corpus Christi, Texas] which was reasonably close to his home. Duty there was very different. He did not have to worry about getting killed and had better facilities. He got weekend passes [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. He could go into town and have a good time. In Corpus Christi, he was just another sailor. But up in East Texas, the people would shake hands and be friendly. It depended on where you were at. Oney was a Ship's Cook 1st Class at Cuddihy Field, Corpus Christi. It was a satellite from the main base.

James Oney was discharged 30 November 1946 [Annotator's Note: as a Ship's Cook 1st Class]. He thought about a career. He decided to go from reserve to regular Navy. He was discharged and accepted all at the same time. He was married to his first wife and they had a terrible automobile accident. His wife was injured badly in her right leg. She was in the Naval Air Station hospital at Corpus Christi [Annotator's Note: Naval Air Station Corpus Christi in Corpus Christi, Texas] and had surgery that saved her leg. Because of that he applied for a dependency discharge because he did not want to travel away from her. He tried civilian life and went to Port Arthur, Texas and worked for Gulf Oil. He worked a couple of months and decided it was not for him. Jobs were scarce. He had the G.I. Bill so he went to East Texas Baptist College [Annotator's Note: in Marshall, Texas]. In 1951, he graduated with a B.S. in Business and minor in Science. He could not find a job. He went to work constructing gas plants in Harleton [Annotator's Note: Harleton, Texas] for at least five years. Gas prices got low and then they had no work. He took a teaching job at his old high school. He taught and coached football for three years. Teachers were not paid well. He returned to construction for the next 30 years. He worked until he was 86. He retired at 70 but still worked when he wanted to until he was 86. On 1 August [Annotator's Note: 1 August 2020] he will have been married 50 years to a porcelain artist who does what she wants to do and he loves her for doing it.

James Oney cannot think of anything that exciting that stands out [Annotator's Note: about his service in World War 2], but the thing he thinks about most is that he could have been killed instantly if a Japanese pilot had moved his aim one way or another [Annotator's Note: while walking on Stirling Island, Treasury Island, Solomon Islands in 1943]. He would not be here now. He thinks a lot about how organized the Armed Forces are. He praises the women and the men who are in the service. He served because he needed to. He volunteered because he knew he would go sooner or later. He does not know how the war changed his life. He was so young when he went in, all he knew was farming. He is proud that he served and did his part. He does not expect any glory from it. Oney feels that World War 2 was the war of all wars back then. That was wrong. When he thinks of what people are doing with demonstrations and such, World War 2 did not accomplish anything but defeat and kill Japanese. For many years, it changed the American people, but they have gotten away from it. His son was in Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975]. If Oney is wearing his Navy cap, someone will come up and thank him for his service. He appreciates it, but not too many people do that. They take too much for granted. He thinks institutions like The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] are important. He does not approve of the monuments being torn down now because that is history. He would hate to see the graves in the National Cemetery [Annotator's Note: Arlington National Cemetery, United States military cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia] torn down. There are people today who would do that. He thinks it is important to teach the war to future generations. All of the wars he can think of, the Civil War [Annotator's Note: American Civil War, 1861 to 1865], the American Revolution [Annotator's Note: American Revolutionary War, or, American War of Independence, 19 April 1775 to 3 September 1783] have all been taught. It is something to be thankful for. He appreciates the opportunity to tell his story. It has been nice.